News

Domino 6 to Include Spam-Blocking Measures

• By Scott Bekker
• 06/26/2002

"The average e-mail user receives approximately 1,500 pieces of spam yearly and our commitment is to block the majority of unwanted e-mails from harrowed users' inboxes," Ken Bisconti, IBM Lotus Software vice president for messaging solutions, said in a statement.

According to figures cited by IBM, users who get only 5 spam messages a day and spend 30 seconds dealing with each message waste 15 hours a year. A META Group estimate is that spam accounts for 2 percent to 10 percent of inbound Internet corporate e-mail and that spam will grow to account for 10 percent to 20 percent of all such mail during the next five years.

IBM this week disclosed several server-side features to be added to Domino 6 that will help reduce the time that business users waste each day in managing spam.

For one thing, it will feature increased support for administrators to control incoming messages from certain mailing/distribution lists. The software will also add support for checking public "blackhole" lists, that show IP addresses for chronic spammers. New "system mail rules" will allow administrators to filter mail messages based on content.

Another enhancement will be the ability to look up inbound recipient addresses in the Lotus Domino directory to prevent messages from being further routed into a corporate infrastructure.

IBM Lotus Domino 6 and its client, Lotus Notes 6, are scheduled for release in the third quarter. Domino/Notes is the main competitor to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook for messaging market share, although Lotus has traditionally been associated with more robust collaboration functionality. Microsoft attempted to bring Exchange up to parity with Domino in collaboration capabilities when it released Exchange 2000 and some other .NET Enterprise Servers, such as SharePoint Portal Server.